Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy

Welcome to the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy

The Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy is an interdisciplinary research and education initiative at the University of California, Santa Barbara that aims to expand public understanding and discussion of important issues facing working people. In cooperation with the Department of History, the Center administers an undergraduate minor in Labor Studies and a graduate-level Colloquium in Work, Labor and Political Economy. The Center also hosts conferences and workshops that contribute to an understanding, of the issues and ideas, past and present, illuminating the character of American capitalism and the working class that sustains it. The Center is part of the All-UC Miguel Contreras Labor Program.

Recent News

Nelson Lichtenstein awarded 2012 Sol Stetin Award for Labor History. Read his acceptance speech here.

Eileen Boris in an op-ed for the Sacramento Bee

Ghost of Hiram Johnson is looking over Brown's shoulder

Eileen Boris & Jennifer Klien in a New York Times op-ed

Fairness for Home Care Workers

Nelson Lichtenstein in a Democratic Socialists of America op-ed

Can the Unions Survive? Can the Left Have a Voice?

Nelson Lichtenstein in an Los Angeles Times op-ed

The National, Non-Union, Conventions

Upcoming Events

January 18 / Friday / 1pm / 4041 HSSB: KEVIN KRUSE, Professor of History at Princeton University, offers a paper and talk "'Freedom
Under God': Corporations and Christian Libertarianism against the New Deal." Kruse is the author of the prize-winning White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (2006) and the editor, most recently, of The Second World War and the Civil Rights Movement (2012). His new book project is "One Nation Under God: Corporations, Christianity and the Roots of the Religious Right."

February 8 / Friday / 1pm / 4041 HSSB: NAN ENSTAD, Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, discusses "Corporate Imaginaries and the Making of a Cigarette Empire." Professor Enstad is the author of Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure: Working Women, Popular Culture, and Labor Politics at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (1999). Her new book project is "The Jim Crow Cigarette: Following Tobacco Road from North Carolina to China and Back." Her paper can be found here.

February 22 / Friday / 1pm / 4041 HSSB: AMY SLATON, Professor of History at Drexel University, offers a paper "The Neoliberal Logic of the Two-Tiered Workforce." Slaton is the author of Race, Rigor and Selectivity in U.S. Engineering: The History of an Occupational Color Line (2010) and Reinforced Concrete and the Modernization of American Building, 1900-1930 (2001). Her new book project considers the challenges facing two-year colleges seeking a workforce for high-tech America.

Workers

Workers Workers Workers Workers

Workers

The Colloquium in Work, Labor and Political Economy will take place at 1:00pm on designated Fridays during the Spring Quarter in HSSB 4041.

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Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy
Department of History,
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9410.
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